RS

MEMBER DIARY

This Time, We Are The “Good Guys”

To the average American, the argument of using the issue of “States Rights” to trump Federal Policy has been used only twice: The Civil War and Civil Rights. (I hear the howling of constitutional lawyers across the land disagreeing with that statement, but we are talking the perceptions of John and Jane Doe, not policy wonks)

For most Americans, the Civil War was the first time “State’s Rights” was used. Yes, I know all the other reasons Civil War buffs will throw at me as to why the South seceded from the union (“War of Northern Aggression”, etc.,) but at the end of the day, using the our hindsight on history, the war was fought over the issue of whether or not the in United States a man had the right to call another man property and the “property” had to call the man “Master”. No matter how you look at the Civil War, even when near the end, when the South was considering “freeing the Slaves”, the war was fought, in the end, over slavery. Despite what some cranks might say, this was an abomination and perversion of what the United States was essentially meant to be, a nation of men and women where for the first time, individual rights were enshrined and protected from the government. The sin of slavery was paid for in American blood and to this day, the Civil War still is the most deadliest of all our wars.

It fundamentally changed our country and produced a man who, despite all his failings and mistakes, rightfully occupies a place as one of the truly “Great Men” in all of human history. If Judgment Day were to happen tomorrow and every civilization that ever existed were ask to be judged by their finest leader, I strongly suspect we would win with Abraham Lincoln, for here was a simple, ordinary man who overcame his own failings and mistakes and became something extraordinary.

And he was a Republican!

The second time “State’s Rights” were invoked was the Post World War II political “Civil War” over “Separate but Equal”, an euphemism for apartheid. Once again the Sin of Slavery was forcing Americans to come to blows, both physical and political. And once again, the argument of “State’s Rights” was used to defend the indefensible. The image of the Democratic Governor of Alabama standing in front of his state’s greatest institution of learning and using the Constitution to justify segregation is burned into our national consciousness. Rosa Parks, Selma and the Lorraine Motel have entered our national lexicon. Also emblazoned in our national soul were the words “I have a Dream” and the man who spoke them who appealed to our better side.

And make no mistake, the vast majority of the men who used “State’s Rights” to enforce America’s apartheid were Democrats. And while many credit Lyndon Johnson with his passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the main opposition to the act came from the Democrats. Here is link to the vote. Like it or not, it was the Republican Party that made the difference in that historic vote.

Also make no mistake that Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to emulate FDR with his series of bills that encompassed his vision of “A Great Society” was a disastrous vast intrusion on the economic and social fabric of our country. Instead a lifting of the poor to a higher plateau, it instead left behind a devastated urban landscape and it completely broke the back of the African-American family, creating a system where single mothers on state aid are the norm and a several generations of males have grown up without honorable male role models. Want to know when the current Thug culture started? It started in 1964.

It was also the Democrats who gave us Vietnam and spurred the radicalization of the American left. The Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army were just the tip of the radical leftward lurch by a segment of our population and over time they have found a home in the Democratic Party and our nations college campuses.
Fast forward to present day. The Democratic party today is dominated by the spawn of the Sixties. Ideology trumps logic. The Federal Government is poised to enforce its will on an unwilling populace. We have a President who removed a bust of Winston Churchill from his office because it offended him. We have a President, when finally confronted by a journalist who was willing to challenge him on the facts, was revealed not to be the great orator or thinker as he has been portrayed, but as bumbling political hack that had to resort to talking points and illogical rhetoric in a vain attempt to hide his intellectual shallowness.

We have a Speaker of the House who hails from the most radical city in the country and a state that has literally self destructed because it adopted the ideology of radical left for the past thirty years. Our nation is heading towards national ruin and if you want to know what it is going to look like, look west to California.

The pendulum has swung and the hour is here. Regardless of the vote on healthcare Sunday, NOW is the time that our forefathers adopted the 10th amendment for. NOW is the time for States to take back the freedom that has been stolen from us, the common citizens, and restore those freedom to us. This is not 1861 or 1964. This is 2010. The sins of the past have been paid in full, both in blood and treasure. The tyranny of the left is upon us and no longer will we cede to moral high ground to them. The race card is dead. Never again let us allow it to be used as an argument in civil discourse.

The issue before us is the financial wellbeing of our nation and our duty as Americans to see that our children have a chance to live the American Dream. The state takeover of our medical system WILL bankrupt us (if we are not bankrupt already). No one denies the Health care system must be reformed, but what it cannot be is owned and operated by government bureaucrats. No one denies that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are heading to collapse. The question before us is what we need to sacrifice to fix it or change it. More FICA taxes and the ability of our elected representatives to raid and spend those taxes are not part of the equation.

We have tried cutting taxes three times in my life. JFK, Reagan and Bush all did it. Every time it was tried it resulted, after inflation, in more revenue for the Federal Government. THAT IS FACT. However, what did not happen at the same time was reducing government outlays and entitlements. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN ATTEMPTED BY OUR GOVERNMENT SINCE AT LEAST 1929.

It will never happen as long as Obama is President and as long as we keep electing members of Congress who are not willing to actively REDUCE the size of government. A classic example is the increasing of unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 99 weeks. That is an incentive to be a couch potato.

So my friends and readers, being for “States Rights” THIS time is to be on the side of the angels. We have been putting off financial Armageddon for 40 years. We cannot spend or borrow our way out this. We can only work our way out of this mess and that means less government spending, less taxes and greater individual financial control in our lives. The war for America’s future has been joined since January 20th 2009 and the first major victories have been for the left. We will probably suffer another loss this Sunday. But if we lose, it can be a pyrrhic victory for the radical left, but only if we continue to resist on all fronts, both in the courts and in the ballot box. To do otherwise is to devolve slowly into a failed state.

To our founding forefathers that would be the most Un-American outcome possible.